


for dead men deadly wine

by abandonedquiche (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: Under(grad)tale [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Blood, Gen, Hospitalization, Mental Health Issues, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 17:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10972203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/abandonedquiche
Summary: It's Spring of 201X.Your name is Chara, you're going to set your plan into motion pretty soon, even though part of you doesn't want to. You've told your friends and colleagues that you're transferring colleges to explain your uncharacteristic happiness. Maybe you should tell them the truth. Maybe they can help you. But you don't think they can, and you don't want them to intervene. You're going to set them free.You're going to set yourself free, the only way you know how.-Your name is Bobbi, you’re a sorority girl, a Temmie, the whole world is ending, and you should have seen the apocalypse coming. You were Chara’s roommate for a year, before your sorority sisters became too much for them to deal with. You were Chara's roommate for a year, so you knew how messed up in the head they are. But you didn't see anything like this coming.So now you're waiting with friends. Waiting at the medical center to find out if Chara lives through this.-A sort-of prequel to "and the piano has been drinking" and "everyone says, you just gotta let it go"





	1. desires and dreams and powers, and everything but sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PlumTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlumTea/gifts).



> yeah yeah i promise the next thing i write for this series will be crack because not even /i/ can write this much angst without a break, jesus almightly christ.  
> this is uh, if you didn't catch the warnings, this is really depressing. so if any of those tags seem like they might be a potential trigger, please don't read this.

**_Chara, Spring 201X_ **

You know that you’ve been discouraged from warming your coffee on the hotplates, but Alphys does it all the time when Doctor Gaster isn’t around, so you figure you’re allowed. It’s not like Sans, the only person ranked higher than Alphys on the totem pole, is going to drop a dime on you. He came into lab this morning, and when he walked in, he still reeked of last night, which he spent pounding down whiskey shots in Grillby’s.

You know, because you were there, attempting small talk with a guy from the Delta Omicron Gamma frat. Doggo, you think he calls himself. You’re shit at small talk, so it was mostly you downing gin and tonics like water, and Doggo going outside every so often to smoke a joint, while you stood next to him, and smoked half a pack of cigarettes in an hour.

Although you weren’t around for this part - Bobbi had already come to accompany you back to your building - Papyrus had to drive Sans back to his apartment, if the gossip passing between Alphys and Undyne is any indication.

“What do you think about that?” Undyne asks you and Asriel. “Gaster let him work when he was probably under the influence, and you know he’d never take the same shit from us. I wouldn’t even want or expect him to.”

You can tell she wants to suplex something. She takes the sanctity of the lab seriously, or at least respects the shit out of proper safety protocol. And she has a valid point.

Meanwhile, you came into lab hungover, head pounding like a drum, but mostly under the radar. You doused yourself in Bob’s perfume before you left Waterfall for the CORE. You asked Asriel for Advil when you got here, and then drank his entire bottle of water. While he’s kind, he’s not stupid. He knew what time it was. But other than him, nobody else caught on, because Sans was still actively tipsy while you were just… hungover.

“I think that, um…” Asriel starts in helplessly. “Well, blood is thicker than water. I think Gaster’s not sending him home ‘cause he wants to keep an eye on him.”

“Or _us_ to keep an eye on him,” Undyne says derisively. “He’s in Gaster’s office now, but before? Gaster couldn’t have been coming in more often than every two hours. I’m a _grad student,_ not a fucking _babysitter,_ least of all for someone definitely old enough to know better. Chara, what do you think?”

Shewants to suplex something _for sure_ , if she’s asking you, the #1 member of the unofficial “fuck Sans” club. 

“I’m transferring out of here at the end of the term, so he’s not going be my problem in a few weeks, remember?”

You dropped the bomb on them two or so weeks ago. And you are transferring out of Mount Ebott University, in a manner of speaking. Idly, as you get ready to take samples to the mass spec, you wonder if there’s college in Hell. Probably. You just take Calculus III over, and over, and over, into eternity.

_(You need to check your foster father’s basement for the rat poison sometime this week.)_

“In other words, you don’t care,” she says.

You nod to indicate that she’s right. She rolls her eyes at you and huffs. She’s probably going to head to the gym later to punch something. Alphys may or may not watch and swoon.

“He’s, um, d-depressed again, probably,” Alphys decides. “He w-was like that w-when I was an undergraduate. I was, too.”

“Minus the part where you didn’t drink,” Undyne points out. “And if that’s the case, why doesn’t he go see a doctor, or something? You did, Alphys. Last time I checked, I’ve never met a psychiatrist named Doctor Jack Daniels.”

Alphys says that she doesn’t think it’s that easy for Sans.

“Depressed people do a lot of stupid shit,” you say, fairly. You never thought you’d see the day you’d be fair to Sans, but here it is. “He’s in pain, and he doesn’t want to be.”

_(Is that your justification, Chara? For what you’re going to do?)_

“Alcohol fixes that?” Undyne shoots back.

“It’s like slapping a bandage on a festering wound, I agree. I never said it was a _smart_ coping mechanism. Anyway, he’s not actually working with any samples at the moment, and we are, so we’d better get back to it.”

You wonder what death feels like. If it’s like going to sleep. What’s that line from that poem you had to analyze for Intro to Lit? _Only the sleep eternal, in an eternal night?_  

Oh, Chara ____, you have wanted to sleep deep since you were a child. Since you were old enough to want, maybe.

You’re messed up, but you don’t think anyone can help you now. Nobody on the face of the earth.

You can only drink so many cups of hot tea with Asriel - the only one you trust, other than Bob, who you only sort of trust after a year of having her as a roommate - and skirt around your trauma to a kid who’s never known trauma, or hunger, or thirst, or abuse from his parents, or self-loathing, or ever really wanted for anything in his life. Except for a friend, maybe. 

He told you he never made many. He was quite shy until after high school.

You think of your locket. You grab it, close your eyes, and inhale.

He wants to fix you, but he doesn’t understand where to begin. Neither do you.

You think of what you told yourself when you were seventeen, back when you were convinced you could finally escape your past by going to college.

_“You should be smiling. Aren’t you excited? Aren’t you happy? You’re going to be free.”_

The connotation is different, now. But you’re still full of the same determination you were the last time you thought it.

“I am going to miss you so very much when you leave,” Bob says to you, once you return to Waterfall Quad. It’s movie night in her room.

She catches you in one of her usual hugs - a testament to your friendship that you let her touch you - and you can smell her perfume.

You, she, and Ragel watch Dawn of the Dead on her bed. Ragel says nothing about how he’s sorry to see you transferring out, until Bob shoots him a pointed glare.

“Yeah, Chara, it’s not going to be the same without you,” he says halfassedly, giving Bob an ‘are you happy now?’ sort of look. “Who’s going to curse me out in the morning?”

“Berger?” you suggest. “He’ll curse you out if you ask.”

“I don’t think he hates me enough. I’m not Mettaton, after all.”

“Ask him for two cigarettes. I guarantee you’ll get the desired reaction.”

All of you laugh at that.

Bob goes into her closet and pulls out three things. Two 2 L bottles of tonic water, and a giant bottle of gin. You could kiss her.

“I told you that’d make their day,” Ragel says, with something of a grin. “Since we’re not going to have much time to celebrate your acceptance to UCSF after finals, we might as well start celebrating now.”

“Admittedly, when Ragel made this suggestion, I was against it,” Bob says. You’re not surprised. You know her attitude toward and tolerance for alcohol. “But, you’ve been working hard. You’ve worked hard to get to where you are, and to get what you have. I think we should party. And I think you should invite Asriel over.”

Her smile is so earnest and pleased at your “progress” that you want to break down and tell her the truth. 

You want to grab her by the shoulders and tell her that you’re not switching schools, that you’re going to slowly die in your dorm room because you can’t take this life anymore, and the first thing that you could think of to explain your uncharacteristic happiness over the last few weeks was that you were transferring to another college.

“Supreme God of Hyperdeath incoming,” Ragel jokes.

That’s an old one from your freshman year, when you made the mistake of getting Asriel so wasted that he started calling himself the Absolute God of Hyperdeath, and did so all fucking night. He also punched out a frat boy who tried to make advances on your drunk ass. Nobody fucks with the Absolute God of Hyperdeath.

None of your friends have let him live that down. Nobody is ever going to let him live that down, even if he is an RA now.

Asriel Dreemurr, truly the prince of this institution.

You don’t say anything to Bob, though.

You almost wish you could.

When Asriel shows up, it’s with four packs of cigarettes, a container of chocolate chai, and two bottles of wine. One bottle is for him, since it’ll prevent him from trying the harder stuff and making a fool of himself. Another bottle’s for Bob, since wine is one of the few alcoholic beverages she’ll drink without kicking up a fuss. Anything stronger, and she’ll just keel over after two shots. 

The cigarettes and the tea are for you.

“Bob said we were celebrating, so I figured that you deserved a gift,” he says.

He remembered. He remembered that the chocolate chai was your favorite, out of all the tea he has in his collection. And he remembered the right brand of cigarettes. Marlboro Reds. Got you four packs of them.

You almost want to cry. You don’t deserve such kindness.

You should tell him.

You should tell him what you couldn’t say to say Bob.

You should tell all of them. Let them drag you to the medical center - you’re almost sure there’s a psychiatric ward there. Maybe they can help you. Maybe they can chase away the depression and the nightmares.

But nobody can help you, you don’t think.

You’re so used to calling for help and nobody coming - eighteen years before anyone came, before Bob woke you up from a night terror your second week of college, forced a glass of water on you, and made you try that deep breathing shit - that you doubt that anyone would be able to help now. 

Even if the three of them would most certainly listen to what you have to say. They can’t help you, even if they want to. They don’t understand. Same for the doctors in psych.

Besides. They’re all… whole. They’re not broken. Hopefully, they’ll never be broken.

You need to set all of them free from having to deal with your shit.

You’ve been living on borrowed time.

_(And maybe, you need to make a statement to your parents. Maybe you need to show them what they did to you, what it resulted in. It’s one of your many reasons, by far the most selfish, but there you go._

_That’s why you’re stealing the poison from your father.)_

Once again, you say nothing.

Asriel frets over the violence in this movie. You give him permission to cover his eyes for the entire thing.

“Listen, Asriel, if it’s too bad for you, we’ll just turn it off,” you assure him. “And watch the Sound of Music, or something, I guess.”

Ragel gives you one of his patented, shifty, “you have to be shitting me” looks, from underneath that stupid mushroom haircut. You flip him off.

You keep reminding yourself that Asriel grew up coddled beyond belief. The most bloody, violent thing he ever saw was probably when he was a kid and skinned his knees falling off his bike, or something. He’s pre-med, the way Ragel was until he sat through his first Orgo I exam, walked straight out of the sciences, and decided to major in Philosophy and Dance. 

Meanwhile, you have no idea how Asriel plans to survive his ER rotations if he actually gets into medical school.

About ten minutes later, someone else starts knocking on Bob’s door.

“I heard there was a party,” a familiar voice says.

“Who in the fuck invited Berger?” Ragel asks. “Shouldn’t you be in your room cursing Mettaton’s existence, or trying to dismantle the smoke detector, or something?”

“Fuck you, man!” he responds. “Also, I got some microwave popcorn from Shyren, and I have Napstablook with me.”

“Oh, um, hi…” comes Napstablook’s soft, almost ethereal voice. “I understand if you don’t want us to crash the party.”

“Right, so here’s the plan,” Ragel says, pointedly loud enough for Berger to hear. “We let Napstablook in, take Berger’s popcorn, and then lock Berger out again.”

You have never met a pair of friends who shit on each other as readily as Berger and Ragel. They went to school together for a trillion years, so you sort of understand. If you’d ever had friends that long, you’d probably be like that with them, too.

“It’s my room, so I believe I have the final say,” Bob says. “Berger, park your bony butt on something flat, and thanks for the popcorn. But if I hear anything about Mettaton tonight, I _will_ kick you out. This is a no Mettaton zone. Napstablook, the same rules apply to you, except I probably won’t kick you out, since you’re cool.”

“So nice to be among such loving friends,” Berger mutters. 

You snort.

“And please, no smoking in my room,” Bob says.

Ragel stops rolling his joint. Berger takes the cigarette out of his mouth.

The two of them go out for a smoke break not five minutes later. Bob rolls her eyes.

“Those two…” she starts out. “Two disasters. I don’t even.”

As if to support her assessment of her friends from high school, Berger and Ragel return a minute or two later.

“So, uh, we don’t actually have a lighter,” Berger says. “Didn’t realize until we got outside.”

You laugh yourself silly and toss him yours.

“I want that _back,”_ you say to Berger. “So don’t tell me how you lost it, okay?”

“Whatever, Chara.”


	2. pale beds of blowing rushes, where no leaf blooms or blushes

**_Bob, Spring 201X_** _(9 days later)_

Your name is Bobbi, you’re a sorority girl, a Temmie, the whole world is ending, and you should have seen the apocalypse coming. You were Chara’s roommate for a year, before your sorority sisters became too much for them to deal with. 

You knew they were messed up in the head, severely so. You heard their nightmares for two semesters. More often than not, you had to wake them up and assure them that nobody would ever concuss or hurt them again, that you’d take on every single parent they ever had before you’d let it happen even one more time.

And they had so many self-injury scars.

You didn’t begrudge them this. You told them that they could always talk to you, and raised the possibility of them talking to a professional, but that’s all you did. You don’t know if they ever took you up on that suggestion. You never asked.

But how could you have made an oversight as egregious as the one you’ve made?  

You saw Chara carrying the poison back to their room. They said it was for the rats in the basement, the ones that scurry around in the dark and scare the shit out of people doing their laundry all the way downstairs, thanks to the fucking garbage. 

You told them to be careful putting it down, ‘cause if they didn’t do it right, they could injure someone who was not a rat.

They gave you a strange look, nodded politely, and thanked you for your advice.

And all that vodka? Why would they need that much vodka for anything? They weren’t headed to any party.

And then… earlier, earlier still. 

Them telling you that they were transferring out of MEU, and that was why they were so happy. Even though they liked this school, even though they told you this was the first place they thought they could consider a home, in second semester freshman year, a year ago.

You knew something didn’t add up, but you would have never added anything up to get this. Whatever this is. You’re tallying up the requisite sums now, and much to your horror, you finally think you’re getting the right answer.

You remember Sans banging down your door like his life depended on it. Asking you if you still had a spare key to Chara’s room, the key they might have used if they locked themself out after drinking too much or staying too many hours in lab.

You think they forgot you had it, since they always went to security to ask whoever was on duty to let them in, whenever they’d found a way to lock their keys inside.

But Sans hadn’t forgotten. So you handed him the key, and then ten minutes later, there was Chara in Asriel’s arms, bundled up in sheets, bleeding. Occasional drops falling onto the floor. 

And Sans, hot on their heels, with a container of the poison.

You asked Sans for the key back, and he shook his head emphatically.

“Nobody’s going into that room, Bobbi. Not now.”

“Is it just me, or am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Ragel asked, once the strange procession came past him. “What in the hell happened?”

“Nothing good. We need to go after them,” you said.

So the pair of you did.

You two stayed in the waiting room of Mount Ebott University Medical Center for an unknown amount of time. At least 72 hours. You left for an hour or so to get your textbooks and Ragel’s from your respective rooms.

Finals coming up and so forth. In fact, if the calendar on your phone is right, your first exam is in eighteen hours.

Which means you’ve underestimated the amount of time you’ve been in this waiting room, napping across the padded chairs for four or five hours at a time when you could.

On your way back to Waterfall, to get the textbooks, the clink of the keys in your hands made you want to vomit. You hadn’t seen Chara’s room, but you could extrapolate.

All things considered, you’re glad to be here now. In the medical center.

Berger arrived somewhere in the last 24 hours. He took the eternal cigarette out of his mouth. He almost looks weird without it. He goes out to smoke regularly, but not nearly as often as you remember him doing it normally.

Meanwhile, Asriel and Sans say nothing at all, to you, or to each other. At least until Asriel starts to pray.

So, the moment Chara’s allowed visitors, you guys decide to let them go first. When they come back, Sans taps you and Ragel on the shoulder.

“Your turn,” Sans says.

At least he’s verbal now.

Asriel returns to praying.

“How are they?” you ask.

“Alive,” Sans replies, refusing to elaborate further. “You did good, Bob.”

You and Ragel make your way to the ICU, and find the right room after a few minutes of confusion. There’s Chara, looking even smaller in the hospital bed than they usually do. It takes them a moment to register who the both of you are.

Then they have a smile, one so gaunt that it creeps you the fuck out.

Chara reaches out for the pair of you, no mean feat considering how many tubes and wires they’ve been hooked up to. You’re surprised, all things considered. Usually, they spurn physical contact.

Ragel takes one of their hands, but they’re still reaching out for you.

“Bob,” they say, as if they might cry.

“Careful, Bobbi,” he says to you. “Don’t dislodge their pulse oximeter.”

You remember from high school that he used to volunteer in a hospital, that he wanted to be a doctor. Figures that he still knows this shit. You follow his lead, in clasping Chara’s other hand, both of you careful not to mess with any of their IVs or other medical apparatus.

“Thank you,” they murmur. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Ragel repeats.

“I’m sorry it didn’t _work_ ,“ they manage to grind out, staring at you as if daring you to object.

You’re not sure what to say to that. And sadly, you’re not even surprised they said it.

“You’re still in the ICU, Chara. Not out of the woods yet. It _could_ work,” Ragel says, blunt as ever.

You stomp on his foot. He winces.

“If I could be so lucky,” Chara returns.

“ _We_ won’t let it work, though,” Ragel insists. “ _Waterfall Quad, Building Four,_ we look out for our own. Garbage and all.”

 _“Building four,”_ Chara rasps, a small trickle of blood leaking from their nose. You don’t know if that’s supposed to be happening. Should you call someone? _“To the end.”_

Then, monitors start beeping, and later wailing, around you. A cacophony. You don’t know what to do, suddenly frozen in this room, frozen, shocked, and overwhelmed. You look nowhere and everywhere frantically, your voice gone.

“Somebody help!” Ragel shouts. “Their vital signs look like they’re dropping! We need help!”

A doctor and two nurses pull you two out of their room, and banish you back to the waiting room. You don’t dare tell Asriel or Sans what just happened. You know how easy Asriel is to cry. To cry and to panic, particularly now. Your first night here, Asriel started clamoring to see Chara so loudly that a nurse forced some kind of anxiety medication on him. And as big as he was, that conked him out in fairly short order.

Some time later, one of the clinicians comes out to inform all of you that Chara is stable (relatively speaking) again. But they’re not allowed visitors anymore. Not right now.

Asriel continues to pray, his voice issuing in terse Hebrew - at least you think that’s the language - his eyes looking out at nothing in particular.

“Do you ever stop praying, man?” Berger asks.

Asriel doesn’t dignify this with a response.

“Be glad he’s not saying the Kaddish,” Ragel says.

“The _what?”_ Berger asks.

“You know what, Berg? I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m older than you by six months, you weirdo."

More time passes. Nothing to say, really. You guys try to study, even Asriel, halfheartedly. Sans pays for coffee for all of you, going to the cafeteria to get it, but that too resolves into silence once he brings back the steaming cups.

“We’re all going to fail our final exams if we keep up vigil here,” Berger finally says, somewhat sensibly.

You and Asriel stare at him as if to say, “Are you fucking serious?”

Asriel actually asks that question out loud. This is the first time in the history of the universe that you’ve heard the big guy curse. You figure it’s warranted. Berger recoils, realizing that Asriel could probably knock the shit out of him with one hand with sufficient provocation.

“I’ll not leave them,” you say. “Not now.”

“Better idea, Bob,” Ragel says. He takes a notebook out of his bag. “Everyone, tear out a sheet and write down your final exam schedule. Berger’s right. We can’t all stay here. It’s two visitors in the ICU rooms at a time, max, and there’re five of us, counting Sans. Write out your schedules, and we’ll figure out a way to do this so at least one of us is here at all times.”

“This is going to help Chara get better how?” Berger asks.

You’re about one more stupid comment away from punching him in the face yourself.

“We need to remind them that there are people who care,” Ragel answers. “That they’re not alone. _Waterfall Quad, Building Four._ ”

He repeats the last bit at unpredictable but reasonably frequent intervals, almost like a mantra.

You think it’s the closest thing Ragel the vehement atheist has to a prayer. If he says it enough times, maybe Chara will pull through. And then they’ll be able to return to where they belong. _To Waterfall Quad, Building Four_. The garbage dump. _Your_ garbage dump, you think defensively, as much as you hate the garbage.

Chara will come back.

Just when all of you are almost done putting the finishing touches on who will be around to visit Chara, and when, provided they can have visitors at the time, Undyne comes charging into the waiting room like a fucking rocket.

“Where’s Chara?” she demands. “I heard about what happened, but the last time I came, the doctor or whoever said no visitors allowed.”

“The ICU,” Ragel says. “But I don’t think anyone’s allowed to visit again, not at the moment.”

Undyne pulls up a chair and takes a seat with the rest of you guys.

“What’s with all the papers?” she asks. “Still studying for finals?”

Well, yes. But that’s not the content of these papers. You bring her up to speed with Ragel’s plan.

So she takes his notebook and scribbles out her own exam schedule. Ragel figures her into the rotation.

That brings you up to six, then. 

Ragel gazes at Undyne and gives her one of his cryptic smiles, before he speaks.

 _“Waterfall Quad. Always,”_ he says.

She nods.

“Waterfall Quad, _represent,”_ she says, although Berger and Asriel live elsewhere, and she hasn’t lived in Waterfall since she was an undergraduate. 

“We’ll make sure Chara gets through this,” she says to you and Ragel, and to Asriel, Sans, and Berger, although technically speaking, not a one of you really can. But you believe her. You believe Undyne.

She says it with conviction, with such  _determination._

And if anyone could do something like shout at a mountain, and actually get the mountain to move, it’s Undyne.


End file.
